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The Playoffs

Everytime I think about blogging, I
tell myself there’s more productive things to do. Like work. When I blog, I’m
sitting in the same position I am when I’m working so it always seems crazy to
blow an opportunity to work since I’m in the chair and all. I’m currently well
into another novel, believe it or not. Peep
Show my second is done and coming out June 1st 2010. So because
I’m a writer, I need to keep, ya know, writing and I find myself in a coffee
shop in Oakland-ish Berkeley and I got to tell you, I should be working but I’m
not. The untitled novel I’m working on may end up being my best. But of course,
I said that about my last and the one before that, remember, The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green.
Well, sure, of course I say the next will be the best. I’m aging, getting more
seasoned at this ridiculous craft that leaves you alone all the time. Well, not
all the time. I have a six and a nine year old and a 15 year marriage so I’m
not alone all the time at all. Just from 8:30 to 2:50, which leaves heaps of
time to make beautiful and rhythmic fiction. Some of you right now are saying I
want that, I want that, no not the kids and the wife, I mean I want all day to
be alone and write stuff. Yeah, that’s what I want. I don’t want the routine I
have, you might be thinking, the one where you get up, shower, eat, drive to
the place you make money, say hi to Rob and Nick and Joanne, have lunch with
Rob because he bet on Blah Blah and you bet on Glah Glah and his team won so
you owe him that meal, remember that lunch you owe him. You don’t want to be
there, at In and Out with Rob. His breath is awful and he does that swagger
thing with the wink when he talks about the girls he “boffed” in college. You
want to be alone so you can write the great American tome. They say the
sophomore novel is the hardest to write and I’ll just say it was taxing but the
result is something I’m super F-ing proud of. What I’m doing now, writing wise,
is feeling very free to fly with my characters and every idea that pops is a
possibility so it’s nothing at all like the last experience which held so much
complexity in its inception. The task now is to write a lot and think
complexity later. I think because I survived the second book, I can now enjoy
the confidence that I made it through and this leads to the flow I’m feeling,
the ease with which these characters want to come to life. This, I guess, is
the reward for fighting my ass of to make Peep
Show the book it is. But you don’t know yet. Because it doesn’t come out
until June. Does this blog feel a little advertise-ish. I don’t want it to. I
see that my last blog discussed the Phillys and the world series so here we are
again, the Philly’s are in the first tier of the playoffs against the Rockies.
They start in about ten minutes so I think it’s time to go feel guilty about watching
baseball instead of writing my next novel, instead of feeling guilty for blogging instead of writing
my next novel. Wait, wait, I have one more thought. It’s about God.

Let’s say God is your own
conscience.

In this theory, if you stub your
toe after being unkind to someone for the sake of the unkindness, it is not God
who tripped you up, but you.

We are brilliant because of our
brains.But it is not in our
species’ ability to understand the chemistry of the brain fully. Dreams, love,
sorrow, fear, memory, conscience – you need more than language to describe the
natural firing of human life.

Millions, upon million of
consciences on a planet that’s in constant alchemic reaction with matter whose
intentions are so epically and unapologetically immense that our species is
forced to use math to describe it. Math is language. But it’s not an expressive
one. Or a tragic one. Sometimes the answer is just, 6.

We are meant to describe in story.

The unanswered questions of how we
got here and what our individual purposes are, leave us with great and even
grave anxiety. Why? How? And when will it all end?

We need God because he’s a person
you can see. I don’t mean see. But you know, he has a beard and huge hands and
talks really deep. He’s the face of the swirling chemistry. He’s the best we can
do.